Glanders: medicine and veterinary medicine in common pursuit of a contagious disease

Abstract

TODAY, GLANDERS is a disease rarely heard of in Western Europe, Britain, and North America; but a hundred years ago the annual total of cases of glanders in the horse, published by the Board of Agriculture, exceeded 2,000,1 and British veterinarians were all too familiar with the disease. Moreover, transmission to man took place with distressing regularity, and the outcome was nearly always fatal.2 In 1908, William Hunting, Chief Veterinary Inspector to the London County Council, wrote: "Glanders in man is such a loathsome and fatal disease as to deserve more attention than it receives. ... If the medical profession called for the suppression of glanders as loudly as they did for the extermination of rabies, prevention in all animals would be accelerated. Hydrophobia in man ceased when we had stamped out rabies in dogs, and glanders in man will only cease when the disease no longer exists among horses".3 Historically, the juxtaposition with rabies is apt. Over the centuries the number of animals of the equine species, and of men, whether infected naturally or in the laboratory, killed by glanders have probably equalled or even outweighed those who have succumbed to rabies. In times of war, from the Middle Ages onwards and as late as World War I,4 losses of horses through glanders in the armed forces of all nations must have been always an important and influential factor.' Yet in historical terms the literature on rabies is copious, while glanders has remained very much a neglected subject. Whereas the drama and unpredictability surrounding the clinical manifestations of rabies have frequently attracted the attention of medical and lay historians alike, glanders has remained ignored by most historians even in the context of the

A disruption of ctpA encoding carboxy-terminal protease attenuates Burkholderia mallei and induces partial protection in CD1 mice

“…Primarily a disease of solipeds, glanders is generally confined to equines (horses, mules and donkeys) [1,2]. Glanders in solipeds presents as a chronic or as an acute disease.…”

“…The chronic form occurs either as a pulmonary disease, an upper respiratory disease, or a cutaneous disease. The symptoms of the acute form of the disease include high temperature, depression, shortness of breath, diarrhea, and rapid weight loss with mortality [1,2]. Death may occur after a few weeks from an acute infection, whereas the chronic form of glanders may persist for years and may end in death.…”

“…In humans, glanders is primarily an occupational disease that affects individuals who have close contact with infected animals [1,2,5]. Infection results primarily from exposure to affected animals via wounds, abrasions or mucous membranes.…”

Actin-Binding Proteins from Burkholderia mallei and Burkholderia thailandensis Can Functionally Compensate for the Actin-Based Motility Defect of a Burkholderia pseudomallei bimA Mutant

“…B. mallei causes the zoonotic disease glanders, which mainly affects horses. B. mallei can also infect humans, an infection that is almost invariably fatal if untreated (19). The gram-negative soil saprophyte B. thailandensis is nonpathogenic in Syrian hamster models of infection (2) and was previously classified as an arabinose positive (Ara ϩ ) nonpathogenic variant of B. pseudomallei (3).…”

Molecular and Physical Characterization of Burkholderia mallei O Antigens

“…In this study, we identified the O-PS biosynthetic gene cluster from B. mallei ATCC 23344 and subsequently characterized the molecular structure of the O-PS produced by this organism.Burkholderia mallei is a gram-negative bacterium responsible for a disease known as glanders in solipeds and occasionally in humans (3,8,13). The factors involved in the pathogenesis of B. mallei infection remain relatively poorly defined at the molecular level.…”